Earth finds its voice(s)

Former Screaming Trees frontman Mak Lanegan and Rabia Shaheen Qazi push Earth in a new direction with Primitive and Deadly.”“

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  • Samantha Muljat
  • Earth



“Torn By the Fox of the Crescent Moon,” the first song on Earth’s new album Primitive and Deadly (Southern Lord Records) is business as usual for the Seattle-based drone-metal trio. Massive guitar riffs are on the march, consuming everything in sight, while their melodic cousins circle like buzzards in the desert. Baleful bass lines burrow their way into hell. Drum beats thud and thwack at the pace of a wounded giant. This is the sound of scorched earth — Earth-style. It is, more or less, an encapsulation of what guitarist Dylan Carlson, drummer Adrienne Davies, and a rotating cast of players have been doing since the turn of the century, when Carlson revived the band after a late ’90s hiatus. Before that, Earth’s first incarnation in the early ‘90s was so low and so slow, it made 21st-century Earth sound like a pop band.

But with Primitive and Deadly, the group has buried the lede, as they say in newsrooms. After “Torn By the Fox of the Crescent Moon” rumbles by, in sweeps “There is a Serpent Coming,” another slo-mo slab of dusty doom. It stays that way for well over a minute, until the well-worn voice of former Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan seems to materialize out of nowhere, like a handshake from a man wearing clothes that match the wallpaper. At that moment, Lanegan — another longtime cog in Seattle’s music scene — is the first person to sing on an Earth recording since the 1990s.

Lanegan’s isn’t the only voice on Primitive and Deadly, though. Rabia Shaheen Qazi, the striking voice of Seattle’s Rose Windows, takes “From the Zodiacal Light” and turns it into a modern psych classic, smearing her smoky alto across Earth’s otherworldly plod.

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According to Davies, Lanegan is an old friend, and Qazi was introduced to the band by Randall Dunn, who produced the album at the Rancho de la Luna recording studio in the California desert. The songs were written and recorded before the idea of adding vocals came up, and Earth was “very picky” about who was invited to come in and sing. “We’ve never had anything against vocalists — just wasn’t a direction that we naturally progressed to,” Davies says. “It wasn’t a super-conscious decision to do it, but we weren’t against it. So when the passing idea came, we were like, ‘OK, let’s try this and see if it works. It’s either gonna be a colossal failure or it’ll be amazing.’ We knew there was very little in-between room.”

Lanegan and Qazi’s presence throughout the record is the latest example of Earth’s long-running elasticity in the studio. Since 2000, the band has revolved consistently around Carlson and Davies, which is by design, as it keeps things fresh and spurs musical growth for the core duo. “We’ve had a pretty musical chairs kind of feeling over the years,” she says. “We’ve brought in the best musicians we can, and they’re really good at just slipping in quickly and figuring it out. And the more musicians you play with, the more the music is going to expand, and you’re gonna find yourself more capable of doing wilder, crazier things that were out of your wheelhouse just a year earlier,” she adds. “You’re able to just let it flow through you a lot easier.”

That ease oozes from the new record, which finds Earth at arguably the most accessible place in its two decade-plus history. The band is reaching across its own long-established musical aisle and finding interested listeners on both sides.

“People who aren’t familiar with us are like, ‘This doom thing? Huh. This isn’t so weird,’” Davies says with a chuckle. “And then our long-term fans are like, ‘Well, they’re not too mainstream.’ So it’s kinda the path between the two worlds. We seem to be not making anyone too angry, which is good,” Davies says. “We were walking a tightrope.”

Earth plays the Drunken Unicorn on Fri., Sept. 19, with King Dude. $13. 9 p.m. 736 Ponce De Leon Ave. www.thedrunkenunicorn.net.